Indian Strategic Studies: 11/18/24

18 November 2024

Jammu And Kashmir: Countering Pakistan’s Disinformation Campaign – OpEd

Nilesh Kunwar

Pakistan’s Social Media Kashmir Blitz

It’s no secret that Pakistan relies heavily on indiscriminate use of social media to not only peddle its pathetic Kashmir narrative but also beguile local youth into picking up guns for waging Rawalpindi’s proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir [J&K]. What’s rather surprising is that New Delhi seldom draws attention of the international community to this concerted disinformation campaign being masterminded by Pakistan army’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence [ISI].

One of India’s leading English daily recently carried an illuminating article on this subject, in which it’s mentioned that when compared with the same period last year, the more than 2,000 ‘posts of concern’ flagged during October-November, translates into more than a 22 percentage increase. Quoting “a senior officer in the central security establishment,” the report mentions that there was a concerted effort by Pakistan to use social media to “influence and exploit” impressionable minds and radicalise them for anti-national activities.

This is indeed very disturbing news.

The newspaper report ibid merits deliberation for two reasons. Firstly, inclusion of factual data collated by security and intelligence agencies not only adds authenticity to the piece but also reveals the enormity of Pakistan’s sinister psychological warfare programme. Secondly, whereas the specific information provided has definitely been shared by those in the know with the author, the sources haven’t been named, which indicates that the powers-that-be are for reasons unknown, reluctant to make an official disclosure on this serious issue.

Though allowing Islamabad to get away with its falsehood on Kashmir appears inexplicable, New Delhi certainly must be having good reasons for its reticence on this issue. For one, trying to rebut patently absurd claims and untenable contentions doesn’t make good diplomatic sense and only gives the balderdash an additional lease of life. Two, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has a proclivity of shooting itself in the foot and as such giving it a long rope by keeping silent is in itself a good strategy.

How Can the West Handle the Taliban?

Jens Vesterlund Mathiesen, Adam Weinstein, and Galina Mikkelsen

With Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency, the United States and the West face renewed opportunities and challenges in their approach to Afghanistan. His former envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, saw the election as an opening to fully implement the Doha Agreement, moving toward normalized relations, while the Taliban themselves have urged Trump for a “new chapter” in U.S.-Afghan relations.

Yet Trump’s new national security advisor, Mike Waltz, a decorated Afghanistan veteran, criticized the previous agreement, arguing that Washington had “unconditionally surrendered” and called for renewed U.S. fighting against the Taliban during the 2021 withdrawal. As the U.S. president who brokered the Doha Agreement, which set the stage for the complete withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan—and who once engaged in the controversial overture of inviting the Taliban to Camp David—Trump in his second term has a unique opportunity to build credibility with the Taliban to avoid past mistakes.

Bangladesh’s Impending Descent Into Islamist Republic – OpEd

Subir Bhaumik

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus’s interim administration apparently plans to turn Bangladesh into an Islamist Republic. The country’s Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman has said that the word “secular” should be removed from the nation’s Constitution since “90% of the population is Muslim”.

Asaduzzaman came up with this argument during a court hearing on the legality of the 15th Amendment, which was passed during the ousted Awami League’s tenure in power and which guarantees Bangladeshis freedom to practise their religions. That amendment partly did not undo the status of Islam as state religion enforced in 1988 during the military rule of General H M Ershad, who was later ousted by a popular agitation, but it gave religious minorities freedom to practise their religion.

“Earlier, there was constant trust and faith in Allah. I want it the way it was before. It is said in Article 2A that the state shall ensure equal rights and equality in the practice of all religions. Article 9 talks about ‘Bengali nationalism’. It is contradictory,” Asaduzzaman argued during the court hearing.

Since he is the chief law officer of the interim government, his pitch in court would not be possible without green light from chief advisor Muhammed Yunus, whose liberal image abroad is clearly in contradiction to ground realities in Bangladesh since the ouster of the Awami League government.

Pogroms Against Hindus, Buddhists

Someone in Bangladesh claiming to be an “Islamic Joddha” (Islamic Fighter) forwarded a Facebook post by Islamic Chatra Shibir (student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami) that claimed killing seven Hindus in the recent violence rocking the country’s port city of Chittagong last week. The post claims, “teaching Hindus in Chittagong the lesson they deserved because they had become too bold.” It also called on all to support our ‘Muslim army’ which, it says, has got 200 Hindus arrested to be “taught the right lesson.”

The Belt and Road Isn’t Dead. It’s Evolving

Mie Hoejris Dahl

A long dock stretches into the water at a port in Peru. Massive blue cranes are perched along its length, and one behind the camera has lifted a metal shipping container, so it hangs at the top of the image against a pale gray sky.

China-linked hackers stole surveillance data from telecom companies, US says

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - China-linked hackers have intercepted surveillance data intended for American law enforcement agencies after breaking in to an unspecified number of telecom companies, U.S. authorities said on Wednesday.

The hackers compromised the networks of "multiple telecommunications companies" and stole U.S. customer call records and communications from "a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity," according to a joint statement, opens new tab released by the FBI and the U.S. cyber watchdog agency CISA.

The two agencies said the hackers also copied "certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders."

The statement gave few other details and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

The announcement confirms the broad outlines of previous media reports, especially those in the Wall Street Journal, that Chinese hackers were feared to have opened a back door into the interception systems used by law enforcement to surveil Americans' telecommunications.

That, combined with reports that Chinese hackers had targeted telephones belonging to then-presidential and vice presidential candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance, along with other senior political figures, raised widespread concern over the security of America's telecommunications infrastructure.

The matter is already slated for investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's Cyber Safety Review Board, which was set up to analyze the causes and fallout of major digital security incidents.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Beijing routinely denies U.S. hacking allegations.

Chinese hackers target Tibetan websites in malware attack, cybersecurity group says

DAVID RISING

BANGKOK -- A hacking group that is believed to be Chinese state-sponsored has compromised two websites with ties to the Tibetan community in an attack meant to install malware on users' computers, according to findings released Wednesday by a private cybersecurity firm.

The hack of the Tibet Post and Gyudmed Tantric University websites appears geared toward obtaining access to the computers of people visiting to obtain information on them and their activities, according to the analysis by the Insikt Group, the threat research division of the Massachusetts-based cybersecurity consultancy Recorded Future.

The hackers, known in the report as TAG-112, compromised the websites so that visitors are prompted to download a malicious executable file disguised as a security certificate, Insikt Group said. Once opened, the file loads Cobalt Strike Beacon malware on the user's computer that can be used for key logging, file transferring and other purposes, including deploying additional malware.

“While we do not have visibility into the activity that TAG-112 conducted on compromised devices in this campaign, given their likely cyber espionage remit and the targeting of the Tibetan community, it is almost certain that they were engaged in information collection and/or surveillance rather than destructive attacks,” Insikt Group senior director Jon Condra told The Associated Press.

“This behavior aligns with historical targeting of the Tibetan community,” he said.

Chinese authorities have consistently denied any form of state-sponsored hacking, saying China itself is a major target of cyberattacks.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was not aware of the hacking of the two websites reported by the Insikt Group.

China’s Gray-Zone Offensive Against Taiwan Is Backfiring

David Sacks

In mid-October, China conducted yet another round of large-scale military drills in the Taiwan Strait, including practicing a blockade of Taiwanese ports. This time, the trigger was a series of unremarkable comments by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te on the occasion of Taiwan’s National Day a few days prior. Beijing “has no right to represent Taiwan,” Lai had asserted, describing Taiwan as a place where “democracy and freedom are growing and thriving.” Although Lai gave no indication that he would pursue independence or seek to change Taiwan’s international status, Beijing used his remarks as a new pretext to ramp

How Donald Trump Should Take on China: A Real Pivot to Asia

James Holmes

To Take On China, Trump Should Pivot to Asia - For Real: When he returns to the Oval Office come January, Donald Trump will inherit a very different Pacific strategic seascape than he knew during his first presidency. U.S.-China relations swerved toward competition during his first term, in part because a domineering China had started asserting itself, in part because of Trump policies aimed at decoupling the U.S. from the Chinese economy while curbing Beijing’s warlike excesses. The swerve is complete. Full-blown peer-on-peer strategic competition is upon America, its allies, and its partners at the inception of Trump’s second term. Three pointers for how the administration should approach the competition, with emphasis on its naval and military dimensions:

Pivot to Asia—for real this time

Strangely, it falls to a U.S. president diametrically opposed to Barack Obama by most measures to finally execute Obama’s signature—and best-conceived—initiative in foreign policy and strategy. In late 2011, secretary of state and eventual Trump bȇte noire Hillary Clinton proposed that the U.S. armed forces “pivot to Asia,” unbalancing U.S. military deployments to favor the region over theaters commanding lesser importance. Soon after the Obama Pentagon codified Clinton’s pivot as a “rebalance” intended to reallocate military resources in sufficient measure to manage the increasingly unruly, increasingly forbidding strategic environment in the Pacific Ocean. Two succeeding administrations, including Trump’s and Joe Biden’s, likewise vowed to redirect U.S. policy attention and diplomatic, economic, and military resources to the Indo-Pacific to balk Chinese ambitions.

Yet progress has been fitful. Seems pivoting is easier said than done—bipartisan consensus notwithstanding.

But it needs to happen. Setting and enforcing priorities is what strategy is all about. No competitor, not even a global superpower, sports unbounded resources for enterprises domestic or foreign. Promoting one priority connotes demoting another. Zero-sum strategic discipline comes hard for global powers, though. They tend to take on commitments all over the map or nautical chart, sometimes by design, sometimes by default, sometimes in a fit of absentmindedness.

The Lobito Corridor: Washington’s Answer to Belt and Road in Africa

Zachary Fillingham

The ascent of China’s economic influence in Africa is undeniable, with China surpassing the United States as the continent’s largest trade partner in 2009 and more recently quadrupling the US-Africa trade volume. The trade gap has US policymakers concerned over eroding US influence on the continent, increasing the appetite for developmental and infrastructure investment to facilitate US-Africa economic ties. It is in this context that the Lobito Corridor – a 1,300 km railway traversing Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Zambia – first came to light in 2023.

Any US initiative in Africa is destined to play catch-up against China’s longer running and more comprehensive engagement strategy. Over the past decade, such efforts have run through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a colossal infrastructure and economic development project spanning across Asia, Europe, and Africa. To date, 52 African governments have signed BRI-related Memorandums of Understanding (MoU), and the initiative has translated into billions of dollars invested in the construction of roads, ports, railways, and other critical infrastructure. In 2023 alone, some $21.7 billion in loans flowed from BRI to Africa.

Finance flows of this caliber are never geopolitically neutral, and in this case, they have provided China with unprecedented access to Africa’s vast mineral wealth, with just two examples being the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Chinese companies own 72% of all cobalt and copper mines, and Guinea, where Chinese companies dominate the bauxite industry and are major stakeholders in the sprawling Simandou iron mine.

Lobito Corridor: Beating BRI at Its own Game

Enter the Lobito Corridor, a US-championed effort to engage with Africa in a manner similar to BRI. Announced in October of 2023 at the EU Global Gateway Forum, the project brings together the African Development Bank (AfDB), Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), United States, and European Commission, who together will realize the construction of a railway linking northwest Zambia to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean.

Iran Using Fake 'Dream Job' Offers in Cyber Attacks on US Allies

Hugh Cameron

Iranian government-linked actors have been hacking individuals in key sectors of U.S. allies by offering them fake jobs, according to an Israeli cybersecurity firm.

On Tuesday, a report published by Tel Aviv-based ClearSky Cyber Security identified a campaign it dubbed "Iranian Dream Job," which had targeted the aerospace, aviation and defense industries of countries including Israel, the UAE, Turkey, India and Albania.

According to ClearSky, hackers have posed as recruiters on LinkedIn since at least September 2023, approaching targets with lucrative, and seemingly legitimate, job offers.

These profiles, associated with fake employers such as Careers 2 Find, distribute malware to victims, which, once downloaded, allow the hackers to access systems and steal sensitive data.

ClearSky identified the group involved as TA455, also known by Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant as UNC1549. In February, Mandiant released a report that linked this actor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the country's armed forces.

The flag of Iran over an image of a keyboard. On Tuesday, Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky said it had uncovered a hacking campaign targeting the aerospace sectors of several U.S. allies. Florian Schroetter/Oliver Berg/AP Photo/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

According to Mandiant's February report, which detailed the group's "tailored job-themed lures," the intelligence collected from those in the aerospace and defense industries is "of relevance to strategic Iranian interests and may be leveraged for espionage as well as kinetic operations."

The tactic itself, however, is not new and has previously been employed by hackers from North Korea, who the FBI in September warned had been using fake offers of employment to target cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds over several months.

Behind The Iran-Israel Conflict – OpEd

Neville Teller

However many charges of aggression, mass murder and worse the Iranian regime chooses to level against Israel, there is no disguising the fact that it is Iran that seeks to destroy Israel, not the other way around.

On April 13, 2024 Iran – which essentially means the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – committed a major strategic blunder. Israel’s audacious attack on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus on April 1, 2024 had taken out seven Iranian military advisers, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the élite Quds Force of the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). Such an operation would normally have provoked Iranian ire and an armed response on northern Israel from Hezbollah. Not on this occasion. Instead the incident was used as the trigger for a fundamental shift in Iranian policy which has led to negative consequences for Iran. They are still to be fully worked through and may, in the final analysis, prove existential.

For 45 years – namely, since its foundation in 1979 – the Iranian regime had pursued its self-imposed mission of encompassing the destruction of Israel and its people through funding, arming and supporting organizations, groups and militias prepared to attack the Jewish state. At some point in the period leading up to April 13 Khamenei decided that the time had arrived to change tack. It must have been intense analysis and calculation by his advisers that led him to break the principle that had guided Iran’s foreign strategy for so long, and finally launch Iran’s very first direct onslaught on Israel.

How must the figuring have gone? “Israel has never been weaker. It is bogged down in its war in Gaza. It hasn’t succeeded in eliminating Hamas or recovering its remaining hostages. It is being condemned on all sides for vast numbers of civilian deaths. Hezbollah is attacking it daily on its northern border. Houthi missiles are getting through its defenses. It is the subject of an investigation by the International Court of Justice on a charge of genocide. Imagine the effect of a direct Iranian attack. Think of bombs falling on Israeli cities. Think of Israelis in their hundreds slaughtered and injured. Israel will be humbled. The Abraham Accords will disintegrate, and any hope of their extension will be snuffed out.”

North Korean Soldiers Fighting in Ukraine Could Spark World War III

Ji-Yeon Yuh

The entry of North Koreans in the Ukraine war, if they participate in the fighting, could transform that conflict into a global war. For the United States and the two Koreas, it could become a second “hot stage” of the ongoing Korean War, a Cold War relic with age-defying staying power.

The United States and North Korea have been enemies since the official start of the Korean War in June 1950, with only the 1953 Armistice preventing a renewal of military battle. Without a peace agreement, both nations have been prepared to return to war at any time. North Korea is a garrison state and a deeply militarized society that requires ten years of military service from every male citizen.

The United States remains the most lethal military power in the world, and it retains control of the South Korean military at times of outright war. U.S. soldiers face North Korean soldiers every day across the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The United States also continuously holds joint training with allied nations, which included annual simulations of war against North Korea, staging realistic air and sea incursions right at its borders.

Over seventy years since the armistice, it has always been diplomacy and engagement that opened up North Korea and decreased the risk of renewed open warfare. For nearly twenty years after the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea ceased nuclear weapons testing and welcomed tourists, international aid workers, investors, students, educators, musicians, artists, scientists, and the randomly curious from all over the world.

Civilians, including ordinary Americans, traveled to North Korea, talked with North Koreans, and had their own unique experiences of the country. However, when the Framework fell apart in 2003 and the United States failed to deliver the promised light water nuclear energy technology, North Korea turned back to nuclear weapons development.

Last year, North Korea declared itself a nuclear power ready to use the weapons. It abandoned its reunification policy and named South Korea as an enemy state. Sidestepping even further away from the West, it signed a mutual defense agreement with Russia earlier this year.

Introduction—Fusion, forever the energy of tomorrow?

Dan Drollette Jr

Nuclear fusion as a source of electricity always seems to be just around the corner. As the old joke goes, “Thirty years ago, fusion was 30 years away from becoming a viable commercial reality”—a comment borne out in the Bulletin’s own pages, if not precisely on a 30-year timescale.

In 1971, physicist Richard Post of what was then the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory published a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ article featuring a chart that showed how fusion—that is, the fusing of hydrogen atoms to release energy, a process that powers all stars, including the Earth’s sun—would be widely available on a commercial scale, routinely pumping electrons to the electrical grid, by the year 1990 (although he hedged his bets by labeling it “An Optimist’s Fusion Power Timetable” [emphasis added]).

That optimism was widely shared, judging from the literature in the science and technology press of the time. But it proved to be misplaced; although militaries have thousands of nuclear warheads based on the fusion process, everything about commercial fusion as an energy has proven harder and taken longer than expected. For example, more than 60 years passed since the development of the first fusion “tokamak” reactor in the old Soviet Union to the first sustained fusion “burn,” or ignition, at the National Ignition Facility in the United States in 2022.

The difficulties involved in creating a commercial power plant are relatively simple to enumerate, as plasma physicist Bob Rosner—himself the former director of a national laboratory (and former chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board)—explains in his interview, “Ferreting out the truth about fusion.” In a nutshell, the fusion process releases neutrons that are 10 times more energetic than what a commercial plant powered by the splitting of atoms, or nuclear fission, ordinarily emits. These high-powered neutrons are difficult to contain and rapidly degrade the containers proposed for controlling the extremely hot plasma required for a fusion reaction. At the same time, plasmas are just plain difficult to keep stable while producing that all-important steady (or quasi-steady) fusion “burn.” In fact, Rosner notes, it’s likely that if a disruptive instability ever happens at ITER—the giant international research and engineering effort, based in France, that seeks to demonstrate how fusion could be produced in a magnetic fusion device—the multibillion-dollar experimental facility likely would not recover. For these reasons and more, Rosner asserts that commercial-scale, tokamak-style fusion will not be a reality in his lifetime—“and I think not in my children’s lifetime, or my grandchildren’s lifetime.” In addition, he warns about the hype and public relations fluff surrounding overly rosy projections for fusion, or what Rosner terms “a complex mixture of fact, half-truths and outright misinformation.”

Imagining Ukrainian end-of-war scenarios

Oleh Tymoshenko, Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko, and Tim Mak

A Marine Corps guard stands by as President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump meet in the Oval Office of the White House for transition talks on November 13, 2024, (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Donald Trump has chosen a confusing national security team, filled with internal contradictions on Ukraine policy, from supportive to hostile.

Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has said he wants to “tak[e] the handcuffs” off by allowing Ukrainians to use U.S. weapons for long-range strikes, and enforcing U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Trump’s CIA Director nominee, John Ratcliffe, has claimed that the Biden administration’s strategy in the war has been “Ukraine first, Ohio last," accusing the Biden White House of promoting "welfare and Ukraine pensions" over American interests.

The president-elect’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, opposes U.S. aid to Ukraine. When the 2022 full-scale invasion began, she encouraged the parties to show "aloha" and said the Biden administration could have avoided the war just by acknowledging Russia's "legitimate security concerns."

Donald Trump’s choice to head the Pentagon is Pete Hegseth, who has expressed skepticism of NATO, and warned against “American intervention” in Ukraine pushing Russia into nuclear war with the U.S.

But what is clear is that the Trump administration seeks to pressure both sides to the negotiating table. Fox News reported that Trump will "soon" appoint a peace envoy to help diplomatic discussions over an end to the war.

Russia’s War Economy Is Hitting Its Limits

Marc R. DeVore Alexander Mertens

Now that Donald Trump is returning to a second term as U.S. president, ascertaining the true state of Russia’s war economy is more important than ever. Trump’s advisors believe that Ukraine must settle for peace by whatever means necessary “to stop the killing.” Implicit in this argument is the view that Russia has the ability to sustain the war for many years to come. On close examination of the evidence, however, the narrative that Russia has the resources to prevail if it so chooses does not hold.

The apparent resilience of the Russian economy has confounded many strategists who expected Western sanctions to paralyze Moscow’s war effort against Ukraine. Russia continues to export vast quantities of oil, gas, and other commodities—the result of sanctions evasion and loopholes deliberately designed by Western policymakers to keep Russian resources on world markets. So far, clever macroeconomic management, particularly by Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, has enabled the Kremlin to keep the Russian financial system in relative health.

It’s Already Been a Grim Month for the Planet

Stewart Patrick

Carnegie’s Global Order and Institutions Program identifies promising new multilateral initiatives and frameworks to realize a more peaceful, prosperous, just, and sustainable world. That mission has never been more important, or more challenging. Geopolitical competition, populist nationalism, economic inequality, technological innovation, and a planetary ecological emergency are testing the rules-based international order and complicating collective responses to shared threats. Our mission is to design global solutions to global problems.Learn More

A critical United Nations summit to preserve the future of life on Earth ended in disarray earlier this month, after two weeks of exhausting negotiations. The meeting in Cali, Colombia, was intended to be a milestone in global efforts to slow and ultimately reverse the dramatic, human-caused destruction of species and ecosystems worldwide. Despite some important breakthroughs, the event fell far short of the organizers’ aspirations, deferring critical issues and raising grave doubts about the international community’s commitment to end what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres describes as humanity’s “suicidal war against nature.” The outcome of the U.S. presidential election, whose victor describes climate change as a “hoax,” only reinforces pessimism about the fate of the living planet.

The Road to COP16

Like many other global initiatives, this event involved an alphabet soup of frameworks, agreements, and parties. This sixteenth conference of parties (COP16) stands in the shadow of its more famous sibling COP, despite attracting 23,000 delegates across governments, academia, and civil society. Though also deeply tied to climate, this biennial COP gathers the 196 parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). (The sibling, this year called COP29, kicked off this week in Baku, Azerbaijan, with the leaders of the world’s major polluters opting not to attend.)

The National Security Imperative for a Trump Presidency

Kori Schake

Most U.S. allies are sure to be worried by the choice Americans made on November 5. Many observers are confounded by voters’ willingness to roll the dice and reelect the intemperate Donald Trump as president. But Americans have long had an outsize risk tolerance, a characteristic that is integral to both the dynamism of the country’s economy and the vibrance of its society. As the poet Robert Pinsky wrote in 2002, American culture is “so much in process, so brilliantly and sometimes brutally in motion, that standard models for it fail to apply”—an analysis the election result only reaffirms.

The End of American Exceptionalism

Daniel W. Drezner

The only thing uncontroversial about Donald Trump is how he won his second term. Despite polls showing a statistical dead heat and fears of a long, drawn-out wait for election results, Trump was declared the winner early last Wednesday morning. Unlike in 2016, he won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College, improving his margins in almost every demographic. Republicans won a strong Senate majority of 53 seats, and they look likely to maintain control of the House of Representatives. To the rest of the world, the picture should be clear: Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement will define U.S. foreign policy for the next four years.

Any close observer of Trump’s first term should be familiar with his foreign policy preferences as well as his foreign policy process. However, there are likely to be three significant differences between Trump’s first- and second-term foreign policies. First, Trump will come into office with a more homogeneous national security team than he had in 2017. Second, the state of the world in 2025 is rather different than it was in 2017. And third, foreign actors will have a much better read of Donald Trump.

Trump will navigate world politics with greater confidence this time around. Whether he will have any better luck bending the world to his “America first” brand is another question entirely. What is certain, however, is that the era of American exceptionalism has ended. Under Trump, U.S. foreign policy will cease promoting long-standing American ideals. That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.

Myanmar’s Rare Earth Revolution: A Geopolitical Gamechanger – OpEd

James Shwe

As President-elect Donald Trump assembles his new administration, a complex geopolitical chess game is unfolding in Myanmar. The intersection of rare earth minerals, a protracted civil war, and shifting global alliances has created a perfect storm that demands immediate attention from Washington. This situation not only presents a critical foreign policy challenge but also offers a unique opportunity to reshape the balance of power in Southeast Asia.

Recent developments have dramatically altered the landscape of Myanmar’s rare earth industry and its global impact. Myanmar has emerged as the world’s largest supplier of heavy rare earth elements (HREEs), surpassing even China in exports. Last year, Myanmar exported approximately 50,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides (REOs) from ion-adsorption clays to China, far exceeding China’s domestic IAC mining quota of 19,000 tons. This positions Myanmar as the leading global exporter of heavy REOs, with its exports accounting for as much as 50% of the global heavy rare earths supply.

The situation has been further complicated by recent events in Myanmar’s ongoing civil war. The opposition forces in Myanmar have made remarkable gains throughout the country, particularly in areas controlled by ethnic armed organizations. Operation 1027, launched in October 2023 by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, marked a turning point in the conflict. This coordinated offensive saw resistance forces capture over 500 military outposts and several key towns, dealing a severe blow to the military junta’s control and morale.

In a significant development, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) seized control of the country’s rare earth mining region in mid-October 2024. The KIA took over a leading mining center that includes production sites in Pang War, Chipwi, Phimaw, and Hsawlaw. This takeover has effectively halted mining operations, disrupting the global supply chain and prompting China to impose a trade embargo on Myanmar.

Can Donald Trump stave off World War III?

Daniel Williams

Donald Trump says he doesn't want war but if his diplomacy doesn't work he may not have a choice as adversaries coalesce against America. Image: Wikimedia

North Korean troops’ recent arrival in Russia to fight against Ukraine has transformed worries that war will spread regionally into fears that a global World War III may be on the horizon.

North Korea’s entry into the conflict is but a piece of an anti-Western alliance that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. It includes not only Russia and North Korea but also Iran, including proxy militias it sponsors in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as China.

Each harbors an ambition to upend eight decades of dominance by what they consider a sclerotic yet bullying West, and especially leadership by the United States, which they regard as being in decline.

Western analysts see Russia’s war on Ukraine, along with the participation of North Korean troops, as a first step toward undermining the democratic West.

“We’re in a pre-war era leading to global war, the most serious, the most dangerous and the most challenging we have had since World War II,” said Jack Keane, a retired US general who heads the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. “I do believe World War III is in the future,” he said in a television interview aired last Sunday.

On Tuesday, NATO chief Mark Rutter doubled down on alarm by describing a military peril that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.

“Russia, working together with North Korea, Iran and China, is not only threatening Europe, it threatens peace and security—yes, here in Europe– but also in the Indo-Pacific and in North America,” he concluded in a statement read following a meeting with French President Emanuel Macron.

Ukraine’s Trump Tightrope

Nataliya Gumenyuk

As with many other aspects of their war against Russia, Ukrainians have reacted to the outcome of the U.S. presidential election with a certain dark humor. The morning after the election, Ukrainian social media was full of jokes, including by soldiers commenting that they are “preparing to go home soon, since the war will end in 24 hours.” They were referring, of course, to President-elect Donald Trump’s long-standing claim that he could stop the war in a day if he were elected.

Ukraine has many reasons to be concerned about a second Trump presidency. Trump has not said how he would end the war, or even under what conditions. In his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, in September, he refused to say that he wanted Ukraine to win. He has also repeatedly complained about the amount of military assistance that the United States has been giving Kyiv. In the background, there is his longtime admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who was one of the first Republicans to embrace indifference to Ukraine as a policy position: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,” he said in 2022. And in polling before the election, where a clear majority of Democrats agreed that the United States had a responsibility to support Ukraine, only about a third of Republican voters said that it did. All this has led many to fear that Washington—by far Kyiv’s biggest arms supplier—might cut off the flow of aid, or even allow Moscow to dictate the terms of peace.

But the reality of the war has made Ukrainians pragmatic: the situation can always get worse, but they still need to adjust and search for a way out to survive. Setting aside Trump’s campaign rhetoric, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing to work with him. After all, Ukrainians lived through the first Trump administration and have some sense of what they are getting: dealmaking and attempts to flatter Putin, but also, eventually, a major sale of lethal arms, including Javelin antitank weapons, which have been critical in the fight against Russia. Zelensky’s task is and will remain to find ways to receive what his government needs to defend the population in the long run.

Europe’s press goes after Musk’s X

Mathieu Pollet

News publishers, press freedom advocates and journalists in past days have come out in Europe to turn their backs on X, the social media site run by tech tycoon and Donald Trump booster Elon Musk.

The new challenge came from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), who Wednesday took X to French court for letting fake news run wild. The NGO's challenge said X failed to take down a video falsely labeled as from the BBC and claiming that RSF was behind a study on Nazi beliefs among members of the Ukrainian army. The video reached nearly half a million views by mid-September and hadn’t been taken down, despite 10 reports of illegal content filed by RSF.

“X’s refusal to remove content that it knows is false and deceitful — as it was duly informed by RSF — makes it complicit in the spread of the disinformation circulating on its platform,” director of advocacy, Antoine Bernard, said.

RSF's case came as U.K. newspaper The Guardian announced on Wednesday that it was leaving the "toxic" platform, citing Musk's influence in the U.S. election and because of “often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”

Spanish daily newspaper La Vanguardia also quit X, saying Thursday that X had “become a platform for conspiracy theories and misinformation.” And French publishers launched a legal case Tuesday claiming X won't open law-mandated talks with them over content payments.

The moves come at a sensitive time for Europe, as it grapples with how to respond to the election of Donald Trump. The U.S. president-elect beared heavily on Musk's financial and public support during his election campaign and announced the tech tycoon will take on a government role to size down the government apparatus.

Ready to Face a Cyber Attack? Find Out With this AI-Powered Simulation

Your boss opened an email, clicking to read a PDF that appeared to be from a supplier—but it wasn't. Cybercriminals have slipped into your organization's systems, nabbing financial data, security credentials, and personal information—a serious issue, as you work for a defense contractor.

What do you do? Where should your technical team start? Are you even sure what's happening yet? Should customers be informed? What about the police or even the government? Who do you tell internally: the board, the legal team, PR?

Panic takes over as you realize you don't have the answers to these questions—and then, ransomware locks down your networks, with a threat to leak without payment. Breathe easy, though, as this time it's just a simulation: Hack The Box's Crisis Control. It’s a modern take on a table-top exercise that reveals how your organization would face such a crisis before criminals come knocking.

So, we know that it’s not if, it’s when cybercriminals will target organization—which means you need to start practicing your response. One solution to improve preparedness is table-top exercises (TTXs): discussion-based sessions where organizations work out a response to a potential crisis using a “choose your own adventure”-style static decision tree. But those lack realism and are inflexible, making them difficult to adapt to specific sectors or even companies, and they can easily be out of date: criminals use the latest techniques, so you need to train on them, too.

These old-fashioned wargames have had a serious upgrade. Hack The Box specializes in gamified cybersecurity upskilling, and in building Crisis Control has turned its expertise—with a dash of AI—to creating dynamic, action-based simulations for realistic, evolving scenarios to help maximize crisis preparedness across senior management and front-line professionals.

Meta Lobbyist Turned EU Regulator Says Big Tech Rules Have Gone Too Far

Will Knight

It was a bitter and knowing laugh that rippled through the audience when it was announced that Finnish politician and former Meta lobbyist Aura Salla would no longer be speaking at an event in Brussels last month.

WIRED’s resident AI expert Will Knight takes you to the cutting edge of this fast-changing field and beyond—keeping you informed about where AI and technology are headed. Delivered on Wednesdays.

The Absurdity Of War And Its Ethical Echoes In AI – OpEd

Rafael Hernandez de Santiago

In a city where artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize everything from grocery shopping to pet care, one question looms larger than the latest tech trend: What happens when we forget the lessons of humanity in the quest for efficiency? As our screens flash with notifications, a local philosopher and self-proclaimed ethical warrior, Mr. Raf, urges us to reflect on the often-ignored costs of conflict — both in the battlefield and in our evolving digital landscape.

“War, like a poorly programmed AI, often leads to catastrophic outcomes,” Raf quipped during a recent lecture. “Blood is not even useful for making mud. It’s just messy!”

In the annals of history, war has always demanded a staggering price, and not just in dollars and cents. The most chilling aspect is the loss of human life. Each casualty in conflict is not merely a statistic; it represents a unique individual — someone with hopes, dreams, and loved ones. “When we wage war, we’re not just destroying buildings; we’re dismantling lives,” Raf stated, recalling the painful remnants of countless conflicts.

According to the World Health Organization, wars claim tens of thousands of lives annually, and the toll is not limited to soldiers. Civilians — those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time — find themselves swept into the storm. “Imagine being at a family picnic and having it interrupted by artillery fire. That’s no way to spend a Saturday!” Raf remarked dryly, emphasizing the absurdity of violence amid humanity’s gatherings.

But the scars of war run deeper than physical loss. The psychological impacts are profound and often overlooked. Soldiers return home carrying the invisible burdens of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. “It’s like bringing a demonic AI home from work; you can’t just turn it off!” Raf lamented. He highlighted that the horrors of war haunt veterans and civilians alike, leaving a legacy of trauma that can echo through generations.

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